Fixie Friday - Royal Mail Messenger Bag
Awesome use for some old mail bags. I know it's not the usual Fixie Friday bike, but pickings were slim this week.
via Instructables
Train and Towers
Because everything you use and do on the web doesn't need to be freaking instantaneous. The slow web is definitely the way forward.
Sense and Sensibility with Curtis McHale
Top geek in the entrepreneur and web development world says that formality is a virus. Thank goodness there are people in the world with their heads screwed on like Curtis to remind that a little formality and humdrum is okay.
Nicholas Bate has his own way of identifying a product ...
... worth building.
I've asked my brother-in-law why these towers are called the Marilyn Monroe Twins, but he didn't know. Still, they're great to see on the Mississauga skyline.
Added to the reading list ...
... the Aubrey-Maturin series as recommended by
Michael Wade. I loved the movie, so reading the series of books is really a no-brainer.
Moving on ...
For a few months now I have been thinking about reducing my time spent on Twitter. When I first started using Twitter, I used it solely for the purpose of finding useful tips and links for Ruby on Rails and conversing with the rest of the Ruby community. Now though it seems that there's less and less interesting stuff being posted on Twitter and most people use it for day to day stuff. That's all well and good if that's what you use Twitter for, but I'm starting to find that it's not for me.
The flip side of this is that I need another avenue to post my thoughts and other nonsense, which is why I going to be publishing more and more things on my blog.
After reading Scott Hanselman's post on the subject, it's pretty much cemented my feelings on the matter and I'm going to limit my time on Twitter for the foreseeable future. I'm still going to auto-post links from my blog to my Twitter account and the odd post from Path but other than that there won't be much activity on my timeline.
So where can you contact me then? Email always works. You can get me at matthew [at] matthewlang.co.uk, and I'm also on Path as well if you're interested.
Escaping from the walled garden
Some influential posts that have got me thinking that Twitter isn't really for me anymore.
The current problem with Twitter is not that they’re now trying to make money, it’s that they didn’t have a viable business plan from day one. They’ve turned those kings into serfs that are for sale.
— Twitter: Turning Kings in to Serfs by Curtis McHale
I’m not quite sure if Twitter changed. But it seems to have, for me. And it is far more likely that I have or that I am. It is not currently a place I wish to be. I wish I could tell you why but I’m not sure I have examined it deeply enough.
Every developer should have a blog - Put yourself out there and make it findable. And still you tweet giving all your life's precious remaining keystrokes to a company and a service that doesn't love or care about you - to a service that can't even find a tweet you wrote a month ago.
Your words are wasted
You are not blogging enough. You are pouring your words into increasingly closed and often walled gardens. You are giving control - and sometimes ownership - of your content to social media companies that will SURELY fail.
— Your Words are Wasted by Scott Hanselman
The near opening paragraph to Scott Hanselman's latest post has been resonating in my head for a day now. In it, he champions the blog over the increasing walled gardens that social networks have become.
I've been thinking long and hard about leaving the world of social networks like Twitter, and just pouring out all my thoughts here. Writing has been something I've neglected in the last few months yet I really enjoy doing it. Rather than checking my Twitter timeline countless times per day, perhaps I should spend the time writing through the day.
I'll keep you posted on this one next week, however it's increasingly looking like I will take some time out from Twitter.